CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is the most common name for this
disorder, but it also has been called chronic fatigue and immune
disorder (CFIDS), myalgic encephalomyelitis, low natural killer cell
disease, post-viral syndrome, Epstein-Barr disease, and Yuppie flu.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has so many names because researchers have been unable to find
out exactly what causes it and because there are many similar,
overlapping conditions. Reports of a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome-like syndrome called
neurasthenia date back to 1869. Later, people with similar symptoms
were said to have fibromyalgia because one of the main symptoms is
myalgia, or muscle pain. Because of the similarity of symptoms,
fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are considered to be overlapping syndromes.
In the early to mid-1980s, there were outbreaks of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in some areas
of the United States. Doctors found that many people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome had
high levels of antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which
causes mononucleosis, in their blood. For a while they thought they
had found the culprit, but it turned out that many healthy people
also had high EBV antibodies. Scientists have also found high levels
of other viral antibodies in the blood of people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. These
findings have led many scientists to believe that a virus or
combination of viruses may trigger Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was sometimes referred to as Yuppie flu because it seemed to
often affect young, middle-class professionals. In fact, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can
affect people of any gender, age, race, or socioeconomic group.
Although anyone can get Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, most patients diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are
25-45 years old, and about 80% of cases are in women. Estimates of
how many people are afflicted with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome vary due to the similarity of
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms to other diseases and the difficulty in identifying it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated
that 4-10 people per 100,000 in the United States have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
According to the CFIDS Foundation, about 500,000 adults in the
United States (0.3% of the population) have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This probably is a
low estimate since these figures do not include children and are
based on the CDC definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which is very strict for
research purposes. |
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